📰 Top 5 Digital & Social Media News

Earlier we had announced that Instagram is planning to launch a new messaging app called Threads. Well, now it is released, and they are starting to roll it out globally.

The idea behind the new app is to help you communicate visually with videos and quick ‘Story’ kind of posts, to your close friends list. If you know, within Instagram there is a list called ‘Close Friends’. You can move certain Instagram contacts into your close friends list, and this app will now allow you to exclusively create a space to communicate with them, without interfering with other things that are going on with Instagram.

Instagram is getting busier with all sorts of posts and business-related stuff, for many of us. So now Instagram is trying to move all our personal, close friends conversation into this app.

It is an interesting trend and we just have to wait and watch how this is panning out in the future. Whether Instagram is trying to make this as a personal communication tool and keep Instagram as a larger, wider, business and personal communication tool, is something to wait and watch out for

Twitter is withdrawing its support on Periscope mobile apps for 360-degree cameras and GoPro cameras.

The mobile app will not support, but Twitter has also clarified that they will continue to support external cameras, not 360-degree cameras, 360 camera support has completely been withdrawn, but external camera support will continue to remain in Periscope Producer platform, which is a desktop platform. So, check it out.

If you are into live streaming using Periscope, this is big news, especially if you’re using GoPro cameras

Last week, WEF, World Economic Forum released an article with an infographic showing how the four different generations are using social media – the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z.

It has some fascinating findings and I will link to the infographic in my show notes. Do check it out. One of the things that’s interesting, I wanted to point out to you is, Baby Boomers are showing the highest growth in Instagram and WhatsApp usage.

There are also interesting findings related to the way they use it for networking – networking behavior of different generations and so on. Check out if you’re interested in knowing about the trends or the way in which different generations use social media.

Our final news of this week is an interesting one from both TikTok and Google. First TikTok was spotted testing a feature that allows you to search for videos based on people’s faces. You can just select a face of a person and say, “Go find all TikTok clips that have this face on it”.

You can imagine all the implications that come with this kind of visual search. Visual search for videos is becoming very powerful on platforms.

The second part of this news is about Google Lens. Google Lens team released an article last week talking about its advancements. Google lens has been there for a while.

You can take a picture of a shoe or a hat or a coat, and Google Lens will tell you details about that product, and similar images. Now it’s getting advanced. If you take a picture of a coat, or a fashion statement, or an accessory, it will tell you who else has used it, how they have used it, all the different styles in which they have used that particular garment.

What I wanted to point out to you as a leader is an advancement in the visual search technology, and how it could impact social media and digital campaigns in the days to come.

That’s all we have for you this week. Thank you for spending your time with us.

Have a wonderful week!

Do leave your comments, questions, feedback, and reviews.

We will bring you a fresh set of the latest Social Media news for you next week.

Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches and Ministries. You can subscribe to Natchi’s email newsletter by clicking here.